UK Government Wants Google To Police Copyright

judgecorp writes "the UK's culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will this week ask Google to stifle sites deemed to be pirates, pushing them down the listing and cutting off their advertising revenues. The UK government has already outlined plans to make ISPs police copyright breaches by users."

Re:You have to follow laws

[Extremus]

The arguments for decreasing freedom in order to protect human rights are MUCH more compelling than the arguments for slashing freedom in order to protect corporate interests.

This just in...

[ace37]

Due to the extensive illegal use of their product, police have asked Remington to stop the Mexican drug trade.

Re:Who's in charge?

[ElectricTurtle]

In case you weren't paying attention to the way Google works, if their actions in China are taken as an example, Google could, if exasperated enough, just redirect all search traffic to servers located in a place with different laws. This is the internet. Location isn't all that important.

Re:Let's just...

[ratbag]

Let's just get rid of copyright and replace it with something sane.

Maybe it's a sign of my age, but when someone comes out with a sentence like that, I feel I've got to ask "such as?"

Sure, you'll get plenty of "stick it to the man" positive moderation, but you haven't really made the world a better place, have you? Nor have I, so I'll shut up and crawl back to my coding.

Re:You have to follow laws

[gstoddart]

Not every country in the world has criminalized copyright infringement.

No, but anybody who does any meaningful amount of trade with the US is having ACTA [wikipedia.org] crammed down their throat as a condition of continuing to do to so.

Sadly, any country which hasn't begun to criminalize it isn't being given a whole lot of options. The world is now so beholden to copyright, it isn't even funny any more.

It's a treaty they won't make public, which makes it all about what they want, and you and I can go get stuffed.

Re:You have to follow laws

[ElectricTurtle]

I feel exactly the same way. When I was a teenager I was pretty gung ho patriotic, and not just because I thought it was the 'thing to do' but because I had (insofar as I could at that age) studied history and been convinced that the USA had done more good than harm despite its faults.

The last decade has been deeply disturbing and embarrassing. Not since the Sedition Act has there been such unconstitutional nonsense as 'free speech zones', 'warrantless wiretapping', etc. and such heinous SCotUS rulings as Kelo v. New London. And in every legislative session the 'PATRIOT' Act as is rubber stamped, and somebody finds some new way of arbitrarily removing freedoms from persons by creating new secret 'lists' with no appeal and no oversight. It has the feel of the 'enemies' lists of dictators or Roman emperors.

Neither party has a contrary position. Until people wake up and free themselves from the duopoly (which will take a political crisis the nature of which I can't honestly imagine) we're due for more of the same.

All I know is I'm not part of the problem. Where there is any option I vote for a 3rd party candidate.